The Designer's Notebook: A Letter from a Dungeon

I write
to you from the thirteenth level of a dungeon. The dungeon has a name,
but I will not disturb you with it, for it sounds ridiculous and made
up. My companion and I have stopped to rest and heal ourselves before
going on, and I felt that as you have not heard from me since I left the
School, you might care to know how your pupil has fared.

If I may
say so without impertinence, our adventures have had an altogether different
character from what I was led to expect at school. There we were of course
taught of many different heroes – King Arthur and the knights of the Round
Table; Beowulf; Siegfried; Salah-el-Din; Robin Hood. I fancied that someday
I should come to be like them. I was trained to be a warrior by your esteemed
self, and we live in a world seemingly designed for heroes and their deeds…
and yet I find myself on a quest, or series of quests, so unheroic as
to make me wonder if I ever had a proper understanding of the meaning
of the word.

The
Avatar from Ultima IX stands before a dungeon.

But let
me begin at the beginning. My companion and I arrived at the town (it
has a similarly ludicrous name), and were immediately introduced to a
group of folk: a blacksmith, a healing-woman, a grocer, a thaumaturge,
and the like. Each of these people sells an array of goods and services
at a wide range of prices, yet oddly enough my companion and I seem to
be the only customers they ever get. The townspeople themselves are neither
warriors nor wizards, for they welcomed us with open arms and immediately
began to importune us to undertake errands of various sorts for them,
for which they promised rich rewards. Indeed, having achieved several
of these I know they do not lie, for with each success they gave us great
sums of gold. We have no use for it, however, except to buy overpriced
goods at their own shops. While they have no other customers, they also
have no competition.

Exploring
the countryside around the town, we soon came upon the dungeon in which
we now find ourselves. What a strange place this is! I cannot determine
who made it or why it is here. It seems to consist of room after room
of chests, crates, boxes, barrels, jars, vases, and other containers;
most empty, but some containing food, weapons, or magical items. A few
of these vessels have been booby-trapped, though for what reason I cannot
imagine, since the booby-trapped ones seldom contain anything more valuable
than the others.

The rooms
themselves are built in a variety of architectural styles. We have seen
many types of stone, and arches, pillars, cornices, balustrades, and other
interesting elements, but all have one thing in common: they are uniformly
rectilinear. Not a single curve have I seen to relieve the stark uniformity
of the place. The floors, too, are curiously level and even; laid by master
craftsmen no doubt, but without a step or platform anywhere. There are
stairs which lead from one level of the dungeon to another, but that is
all. And these levels themselves are curious also: the layout of each
bears no relation to the one above it, and the style of the stonework
changes suddenly without apparent reason; yet level upon level, the place
seems to be little more than a vast storehouse, a storehouse with no rhyme
or reason, organization or plan.

Yet a storehouse
it is not, for the dungeon is inhabited. The creatures that live here
could not have built it – ugly, misshapen brutes with crude weapons and
cruder clothing. I can only conclude that they moved in after it was constructed.
That is what one might expect of a very ancient building, long-abandoned;
yet in all its particulars this place seems nearly new. Never a crack
in the stone; never a chip; mile after mile of geometrically perfect corridors,
shaped as if by a mathematician rather than these lumpen creatures. I
tell you frankly, master, if this is a dungeon it is the strangest I have
ever heard of, and bears no resemblance to the places spoken of by the
Nordic bards.

The creatures
could perhaps be servants of a single overlord who built this place to
be their dwelling. Upon rare occasions we do find tables, chairs, and
beds, but never enough for all the monsters we encounter. Perhaps they
are only for the use of a middle grade of nobility, and the remainder
sleep on the floor and eat with their hands. In any case the dungeon is
clearly not a barracks or a dormitory; it does not give the impression
of a place where someone lives; it is merely a place where things
are.

The beings
who live here... what shall I say of them? Firstly, that they are uniformly
hostile. We have released a few prisoners, who always flee without offering
to assist us... a shabby, ungracious way to treat one’s benefactors. Yet
apart from these churlish wretches, all others that we have encountered
have attacked without challenge or parley of any kind. And so we kill
them.

Oh, God,
how we kill them.

Hacking
and slashing in Diablo.

Dozens,
hundreds of beasts have I slain, in considerable variety of species; but
each individual is identical to all its fellows of the same species. There
is none of the variation one expects to find among living things, and
I find myself wondering if they are not creatures of machinery or magic,
all conjured from some template somewhere. They attack in groups of four
or five, seldom more, and although there are obviously hundreds of them
in the dungeon, they never mass in overwhelming numbers. They are clearly
extremely stupid, possessing neither any organizational skill nor a communications
system to summon their fellows. They attack blindly, marching towards
us, taking no advantage of cover or tactical opportunities. And so we
mow them down. The simplest expedient is to stand in a door and slaughter
them one by one as they approach.

This is
not the way Beowulf fought Grendel. In this business I am no hero, no
warrior; I am an exterminator, a dog killing rats in a crate. If we fight
on enough to get tired, they can eventually get the better of us, but
for another thing: we have a magic door which allows us to return instantly
back to the town. There we may rest as long as we like. I have no fear
that this letter may never find you – will rot away beside my body here
in the dungeon, for in ten seconds I can be back in safety. And as if
that were not enough, we also have spells of resurrection! Yes! The greatest
miracle of all, which I had thought solely the province of God, is available
in this place for the price of a few gold coins. I myself have died half
a dozen times, through want of attention to my body’s condition in the
heat of battle, and in a moment my companion brings me back to life. I
sip a healing draught and we proceed as if nothing had happened. Death
holds no terrors for me here, and in a place where there is no death,
can there indeed be a hero? Courage is the conquering of fear, yet I have
no fear; no reason to fear, and therefore no need for courage. The stirring
stories I read as a child in school are meaningless here; they provide
no example to guide me. Richard the Lionheart did not cast a spell and
fly home to England whenever he felt tired! He is no adventurer who returns
upon a moment’s whim to sleep in safety every night.

Indeed,
master, I am no adventurer. I no longer know what I am.

And now
I come to my companion. I had been warned at the beginning of this affair
to seek a mage to accompany me, someone whose magic would complement my
sword. Heeding this advice, I chose the sorceress Divandra.

Master,
I scarcely know how to describe this woman. Her appearance I know well
enough, but her character remains a complete mystery. She almost never
speaks. I know nothing of her history, her people, her reason for being
here... and yet we do everything together. I have seen her in furious
battle; I have seen her poisoned; I have seen her dying. We have experienced
nearly every extremity the human frame can endure, and yet for all that
she remains a cipher, a stranger.

When she
does speak her words are short, nearly monosyllabic, commands: "Cover
me," "wait for me here," "help me!" and the like.
Right before my own death I have heard her say, "Oh, no!" which
suggests that perhaps she feels some affection for me – as indeed she
must, or she would not resurrect me – but that is the extent of her emotional
range. She follows me through the dungeon (or sometimes I follow her),
killing creatures and hacking open crates with the same wordless, fixed
intensity. We never walk side by side; we never sit and tell each other
of our hopes and aspirations; we never discuss this bizarre undertaking
that engages us.

Periodically,
as we travel, I can feel myself growing swifter and stronger... not in
the normal way one does in a training regimen, but in strange jumps at
unexpected times. Divandra, too, experiences these sudden surges of strengh,
and from time to time she learns a new spell from old books that we find.
I know with numeric precision every detail of her abilities, as she does
mine. If we were in a novel we would be boon companions, soul mates, yet
here we are silent and glum, always together but utterly apart.

Link,
sword and shield in hand.

And so we
march on in a waking dream, smashing boxes and slaughtering beasts, hour
after endless hour. We collect up gold and armaments, robbing the bodies
of our enemies until we can carry no more. From time to time we find curious
bits of jewelry or metalwork; we take them back to the townspeople; they
praise us and pay us. The arms we sell at the blacksmith’s shop, and use
the proceeds to buy others. We spend an extraordinary amount of our time
engaged in commerce – more than ever Sir Lancelot du Lac did, I am sure.

Where it
all leads I do not know. The townspeople talk vaguely of an evil overlord
who threatens their land, but every time we return to the town there is
no more evidence of his presence, and the people seem to have done nothing
to strengthen the defenses.Occasionally some of the objects we are asked
to find are said to be useful in delaying or destroying him, but once
we surrender them we never see or hear of them again. For a people under
the shadow of doom they are strangely complacent about it.

Divandra
and I have now returned to full health, and it is time to go on: hacking
and slashing, looting and robbing, opening every box and barrel in the
hope that we may unearth a clue as to what this is all about. God send
that it is not a vain hope.

I said above
that I do not know what I am. For sure I am not a hero; a greedy and bloodthirsty
mercenary, perhaps. Yet when this is done, I have sworn to regain my pride
and my self-respect. I shall study again the virtues of the legendary
heroes of old... between the covers of a book.